Eniac Martinez/Focus Features
Making a first feature film is guaranteed to be an enormous challenge, but there are ways to alleviate the burden. One such method is to bring aboard creative talent with whom you’ve had a history, be it in short films, film school or some other outlet. Another is to keep the film small and personal, writing and directing what you know without having to worry about big budgets and the attendant complications.
Instead of making things easier on himself, Cary Joji Fukunaga made them harder. For his debut, the New York University MFA student and native of Oakland, Calif. traveled to Honduras and Mexico, learned a foreign language and directed non-professional actors in a complicated world with which he hadn’t the slightest personal familiarity, with a crew bereft of prior creative partners.
Continue reading “Que viva México” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Sin Nombre (2009)
Eniac Martinez/Focus Features
Most filmmakers keep things on a small, personal scale when making their first feature. Such isn't the case for Cary Joji Fukunaga, the Oakland-born writer-director of “Sin Nombre.” He immersed himself in an unfamiliar culture, shot his film in a foreign language, and came away with a work of great raw power. An immigration drama in the grand tradition of movies like “El Norte,” the movie is alternately brutal and affecting, filled with big dreams and crushing realities.
Continue reading “Amores perros de hecho” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Crossing Over (2009)
Dale Robinette/The Weinstein Company
“Crossing Over” tosses into one convenient grab bag all the political rhetoric and literary clichés from the recent public debate on immigration. Interspersed with sprawling aerial shots of Los Angeles, the film’s episodic narrative and interconnected characters weave together something akin to a mash-up of recent entries such as “Crash” by Paul Haggis, “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada,” “Under the Same Moon” and “Gran Torino.”
Continue reading “Angelenos Struggle Through Crash Course on Immigration” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Sugar (2009)
Fernando Calzada/Sony Pictures Classics
Some might find baseball the most boring of American sports to watch on television (it could have been the most boring of any, but British television airs both snooker and darts), so any movie about baseball automatically has an uphill climb. Previous successes such as "Field of Dreams," "Bull Durham" and others which don't star Kevin Costner have raked the sport over pretty thoroughly. But Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who co-wrote and co-directed "Sugar" and so refreshed the teacher-student genre with "Half Nelson," found an equally interesting new angle in this film. The eponymous hero (Algenis Perez Soto, making his movie debut) is a Dominican on contract to a training camp for the Kansas City Royals. Since Sammy Sosa made his name, we've all been dimly aware of the baseball fever which exists in Latin America, so it's interesting to learn what life in like for these young men. What makes "Sugar" really special is its focus on a young man who gets what he wants, only to realize it's not what he wanted after all.
Continue reading “Field of American Dreams” »